Chef Kris Yenbamroong of Night Market shares his tips on how to get creative with cooking substitutions.

I am not a chef. Sure, I’ve been consumed by food all my life -- the way fire cradles a wok when fried rice is tossed in it, or how vastly different a stew can taste with the addition of a simple bay leaf -- but I can’t say I am the best rule-follower when it comes to cooking. Because of this, I’ve had countless cheesy soups break and cream sauces curdle. I am familiar with the smell of something burning, whether it’s rice, garlic, or a mixture of both. Baking is an entirely different story -- one that is full of collapsed cakes, close-textured bread, and heartbreak.

But I keep trying, because the joy of cooking stems from experimentation, growth, and that fuzzy feeling I get when I finally make something that actually tastes good. That, and also because Kris Yenbamroong, a chef I deeply admire, cooks this way, too.

For those who don’t know Kris, he’s the chef and owner of Night Market, a trio of whimsically decorated Los Angeles restaurants with a killer wine menu that Chrissy Teigen touts as one of her favorite spots for Thai food and more. In fact, Kris strays away from calling his restaurant one that is strictly Thai. “I’ve thought about Night Market more as an LA restaurant rather than 100% a Thai restaurant. There’s stuff we put on the menu now that even I don’t even know what it is -- fusion kind of dishes,” he explained to me on a recent phone call.

It makes sense. Sure, Night Market was born out of Kris’s background: growing up in his parents’ Thai restaurant, attending Thai school in North Hollywood throughout the summers (at the same temple that I, too, attended Thai school), and sitting around a dinner table with a rotating cast of Thai relatives. But it’s also a place that highlights his experience and identity as an American, one who grew up in LA, attended film school during his undergraduate years, and spent a stretch of time in New York working as a photographer.

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“If you’re running an independent restaurant, like we are, it’s gotta be fun or rewarding in some way."

Initially, when Kris first took over his parents’ restaurant in 2008, he stuck to a strictly Thai menu. He added dishes from northern Thailand, where his mom was originally from, and included southern bites as well from where his dad was born. He insisted that the food be more traditional, but also more “country,” and crafted everything in the most complicated and difficult way possible. “I really had that energy -- that young chef thing -- that I don’t have anymore,” he remarked, laughing.

But overtime, Kris’s desire to maintain an air of authenticity began to fray. “These [identities] can really coexist, right? You can have something traditional and something sort of non-traditional, and you can have stuff that’s not even Thai at all. That’s when I started to deviate and go in my own direction,” he said. It wasn’t just that making curry pastes from scratch with more rudimentary tools was labor- and time-intensive work. Kris also didn’t just want to be another Thai restaurant in LA. “There are things that are relevant to the Thai American experience,” he said. He chose to put those things on a plate.

It started with a fried chicken sandwich. Kris had made it for his staff, using the mass amounts of chicken they had in the restaurant for a menu staple, Northern Thai-style fried chicken. His thinking was sure, I like fried chicken with Thai chili dip -- but I also like it with ranch. After posting the sandwich on his Instagram, an unintentional off-menu sensation was born. From there, Kris really began to experiment. His influences include food from the ‘80s, like crab rangoons, and his combined Thai-American background.

“If you’re running an independent restaurant, like we are, it’s gotta be fun or rewarding in some way. It’s definitely a business, and I’m not trying to say it’s not a business because I definitely think a lot about the business aspect, but it’s gotta be rewarding,” he explained as his reason for going off the books.

It just so happens that improvisational cooking is also a great philosophy to abide by during a pandemic -- where we have less access to fresh produce and minimize grocery store trips in an attempt to keep ourselves, and others, safe.

Photo: Laure Joliet

“If I feel like making something, if I have the main ingredients for it, I’ll just do it even though it’s not complete... If it has the essence of it, it’s fine.”

“There’s a whole section of my book called ‘Using What You Have’,” Kris said of his style of home cooking. “If I feel like making something, if I have the main ingredients for it, I’ll just do it even though it’s not complete. There are chefs who say, ‘Oh, well it’s not this dish if you don’t have this ingredient,’ whatever it might be. For me, I don’t really care about that. If it has the essence of it, it’s fine.”

An example Kris brings up is a recent chicken parmesan he made, which lacked the oozy, bubbly blanket of mozzarella cheese over the top of it. He opted for parmesan instead, because that’s what he had on hand, and swapped out anchovy paste with fish sauce. “Are you going to go to the supermarket or the store just for mozzarella cheese with a virus out there,” he questioned, “just because you want to be complete?”

Because we’re all currently stuck at home, Kris wants to motivate people to try their hand at cooking, using whatever they might have. He shared a simple recipe for his version of what he calls “mall pasta,” inspired by the faux-Italian restaurants sprinkled in Bangkok shopping centers that might make your nonna grimace. The point is that food doesn’t need to be wholly complete or deemed authentic to taste good; some of the Italian-inspired restaurants in Thailand will blow your mind with their tangy tom yum pizzas and salted fish spaghetti.

Kris is an esteemed chef. He’s been nominated for a James Beard multiple times in different categories: Rising Star Chef, Best New Chef, and, again this year, for Outstanding Wine Program. In the same way I trust my gut when it comes to crafting made-up recipes, I trust his encouragement to cook a bit chaotically and outside of the lines.

“If there’s one thing I want to do, it’s to get [people] in the mindset that you can still make good food, even if you don’t have every single ingredient listed in the cookbook... If you only have 60% of it, I think it’s probably fine.”

With that being said, here is Kris’s mall pasta recipe. It’ll still be good even if you’re missing some ingredients.